About us

Naame Shaam is an independent campaign group focusing on the Iranian regime’s role in Syria. It is also a source of independent and reliable news and commentary on the Syrian revolution and the Iranian regime’s role in suppressing it. We are a group of Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese activists and citizen-journalists. The group’s Campaign Director is Fouad Hamdan from Lebanon. The Head of Research and Advocacy is Shiar Youssef from Syria. The other members of the group wish to remain anonymous for the time being for security reasons.

Online, Offline

We carry out peaceful, real-life actions and protests to put pressure on the Iranian regime and to influence the public narrative about the Syrian revolution.

Our first action was in Berlin in April 2014, coinciding with a German-Iranian business conference there. It was followed by actions in Vienna ahead and during nuclear talks between the P5+1 group of nations and the Iranian regime in May 2014.

In April 2014 we published an open letter to Syrian opposition leaders and activists, asking them to talk to the Iranian public in Farsi. The reaction was positive, and the narrative of the Syrian revolution about the Iranian regime’s role has started to change.

More actions and campaigns followed…

The Beginning

On Friday, 8 November 2013, like every Friday since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, anti-regime protests were held in various neighbourhoods and towns in Syria. The name given to this Friday was “The Friday of No to the Iranian Occupation of Syria”.

As we watched the pictures and videos of the protests, we realized that Iranians knew so little about what’s actually happening in Syria. Most of their information comes from biased state-controlled media.

Moreover, it struck us that there was actually little concrete and reliable information about Iran’s role in Syria and in Lebanon:

– How much is the Iranian government spending from Iranian public money on arming and supporting the Syrian regime in its bloody war against the Syrian people?

– How many Sepah Pasdaran members are fighting alongside Syrian regime forces in Syria, or are they really only acting as “advisers”, as they claim?

– What is the extent of Hezbollah Lebanon’s involvement in Syria?

– Why is the Iranian regime spending so much money on its adventure in Syria? What is it aiming to achieve there?

Thus, on 10 February 2014, we started a Facebook page, and a website a month later, dedicated to exposing the role of the Iranian regime in Syria. Offline work followed soon (see above).

Change of focus

When Naame Shaam started in late 2013, hardly anyone in Syria and Iran was focusing on the Iranian regime’s role in suppressing the Syrian revolution. There was little reliable information, beyond general clichés, on the extent and nature of Sepah Pasdaran’s and Hezbollah Lebanon’s involvement in the war in Syria. So we launched Naame Naame as an attempt to fill this gap.

Now that this involvement is no longer a secret (even Sepah and Hezbollah commnders are now bragging about it) and many mainstream and independent media outlets are covering this issue extensively, there seems to be less need for our news and information production services.

Our intention from the beginning was to combine news and information with campaigning work, but the former inevitably took a big chunk of our time and energy because we thought it was necessary at the time. This is no longer the case now.

So, in July 2014, we decided to focus mainly on campaigning and actions, with the hope that our small contribution will help end the bloodshed in Syria and bring those responsible to justice. And ‘those’ here includes, first and foremost, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who are the ones running the show in Syria today.

We have talked the talk; now it’s time to walk the walk!

The Campaign Director is Fouad Hamdan from Lebanon. The Head of Research and Advocacy is Shiar Youssef from Syria. The other members of the group wish to remain anonymous for the time being for security reasons.

An article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, published on 30 December 2014, quoting Naame Shaam’s OpEd on the Middle East Institute website on 17 December 2014. Iran Is Getting Away With Murder Achieving a nuclear deal with Tehran is hugely important. But stopping Iran from […]

The Hague, 14 January 2015 – The campaign group Naame Shaam (1) today said that the destabilising policies of the Iranian regime in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are fueling religious extremism, which will inevitably lead to more terrorist attacks in the West like the recent one […]

The Middle East Institute published the following OpEd by Fouad Hamdan and Shiar Youssef of Naame Shaam on 17 December 2014. The article summarizes Naame Shaam’s report Iran in Syria and its policy recommendations. Here is the full text. Iran as an Occupying Force in […]

The Hague/Vienna, 26 November 2014 – The decision taken in Vienna on Monday to extend the nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers until June 2015 effectively means extending the Iranian regime’s license to carry on with its military interventions in Iraq and Syria and with its […]

The Hague/Vienna, 22 November 2014 – Two days to the deadline of the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, the campaign group Naame Shaam today called on the Western powers taking part in the negotiations with Iran to adopt a tougher and more realistic stance. “Western negotiators should […]

The Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington DC hosted a talk on 14 November 2014 by Fouad Hamdan, Naame Shaam’s Campaign Director and the Executive Director of the Netherlands-based Rule of Law Foundation, which supports Naame Shaam. The one-hour talk and Q&A focused on the Iranian regime’s […]

Below is a selection of English media coverage of Naame Shaam’s report Iran in Syria – From an Ally of the Regime to an Occupying Force, which was released on 9 November 2014. For Arabic media coverage, see here. —— Iran as an Occupying Force in Syria […]

Sepah Pasdaran, Hezbollah implicated in war crimes – Iran an ‘occupying force’ in regime-held areas of Syria Beirut/Damascus/Tehran, 9 November 2014 – The campaign group Naame Shaam today published an in-depth report examining various aspects of the Iranian regime’s role in the ongoing war in Syria. The […]

Six prominent Iranian filmmakers have put their names and faces to a fancy-looking social media campaign urging world powers to agree to a deal concerning Iran’s nuclear programme before the 24 November deadline for the ongoing negotiations in Geneva. The ‘improved offer’ the celebrities are making – […]